As we enter 2024, it’s time to rethink our SEO strategy. Rather than a complete overhaul, assessing what’s working and what needs improvement will help you readjust your priorities.
This article outlines the key strategic aspects you need to review, from high-level business considerations to the specific data, tools, content, and technical elements that drive results.
Whether you’re aiming for small tweaks or bigger changes, this checklist will help you set up your SEO program for success over the next 12 months.
Gain clarity on business priorities for 2024 and beyond
Before evaluating your SEO strategy, you need to understand where your business wants to go in 2024 and beyond. Learn about potential strategic moves, new products, markets, audiences and pivots.
Business strategy should be built into the foundations of your plan, so the more you can understand it and make sure your goals are aligned, the better.
Economic or industry trends: do you have the right awareness?
Macro trends may have been addressed in the broader business strategy. Still, it’s good to do your research.
What’s happening in the industry, thinking beyond SEO? Have any major competitors made big moves in 2023? Are there annual reports you can download and read? What does the industry press say?
It’s that time of year when all the prediction stuff comes out, make sure you keep your eyes peeled. Think about how this information can affect the trajectory of the company in 2024, especially search.
Audience Insights: Has anything changed about how customers search for or buy your product or service?
How well do you know your audience? And to what extent does this knowledge inform your search strategy?
Understanding your audience should be central to your strategy. When was the last time you mapped the customer journey?
For example, seeing the intersections where search and social work together can be really insightful about what content the user is looking for.
Is your audience still turning to a search engine at milestones in your journey or are they searching on social media? Do they want written content or expect to see audio or video?
Also, are you still considering the right audience or is there a new audience you could be reaching? With the knowledge of business strategy and new product launches that could be coming, does this change anything?
Competitors: Are you still monitoring the right competitors?
Map your competitors and make sure you haven’t missed any new players in the market. You may have Goliaths that aren’t your daily search competitors.
When was the last time you took a deep dive into some of your top search competitors? Resetting your strategy is always a good time to do so.
See where they’re focusing, if they’re doing something you haven’t considered, and where you see risks.
Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
With all the research you’ve done with the big picture in mind, write down what you think your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOTs) are from an SEO perspective.
This can be something you use just for yourself, but it can also be useful to include in your strategy documentation if you need to share it with a manager, the board or your client. It shows that you really understand where you are currently and what is likely to happen in the next 12 months.
So, with your business strategy fully considered, you can now dive into your SEO strategy, starting with a performance review and record of your processes, tools and people.
Dig Deeper: SEO SWOT analysis: How to optimize where it counts
Best and worst performance of last year
I always find it helpful to review last year’s performance. You may want to include slightly different insights depending on your strategic focus.
See top-performing and worst-performing content from a search perspective, overlaying information such as content format. Compare this to content across all channels, and you can start to understand what content is most popular with your users and in what format.
Consider this content with your goal and ecommerce data. You will have your own attribution model agreed upon by the company, but I always find it useful to see where SEO has helped convert someone.
If you have a well-defined customer journey, you will definitely understand the role SEO wants to play in customer conversion, as you will know where your focus has been.
To see the success he has had throughout the year is a great exercise. This highlights gaps where results have not been achieved, or maybe the rankings are there, but doesn’t drive the expected action.
Work with your CX and data teams to understand some of these trends. Looking at rankings, for example, can be too narrow a focus. It doesn’t tell you enough to understand if SEO is actually doing the job of converting customers.
So think big when it comes to reviewing the 2023 data. It’s also a great opportunity to think about whether there’s anything you wish you’d tracked so you can put it in place for your 2024 strategy.
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Carefully evaluating your tools is crucial, as overlooking a key asset could give your competitors an edge.
We all create habits, and it’s no different with our tools. Let’s go in and use the same reports we always use. But is there more to the tools you have that you’re not benefiting from? Need a little more provider training?
Or are there new tools that could increase your capacity, speed up processes, or improve your SEO strategy?
Depending on when your annual budget comes up, it’s worth spending some time looking at what’s on the market and the best use of your tool budget.
AI: Did you accept it?
2023 was the year when AI was the topic of almost every article, podcast and event. Have you tested where AI can fit in for you and your business? If not, I’d recommend spending some time on it in 2024.
I believe that AI is a valuable ally for strategy, serving as a data cruncher, researcher, or ideation machine. While it’s not a finisher for tasks like publishing content or making final decisions, it significantly improves processes and speeds up delivery.
Reporting: Are your reports conveying what they need to?
SEO reports serve two purposes:
Provide detailed information for daily decision making with close colleagues. Fulfill reporting requirements for managers, boards of directors or clients.
At the start of a new year, it is beneficial to seek feedback from recipients to improve the transparency and clarity of your reporting.
Team and Partners: Are you ready to succeed in 2024?
With the many skills needed to deliver an SEO strategy, you’ll have colleagues, freelancers or an agency to support you. I hope they are also part of what we cover in this checklist. For most agency relationships, some version of this should happen every quarter.
As you build your 2024 strategy, consider whether you have the right players in the right positions and make sure they know what their part is.
Keywords: Are they still relevant? what do you miss
Understanding your audience’s search behavior is crucial to a successful SEO strategy. It’s not just about optimizing what you think makes sense; you need to make sure it aligns with user intent.
Without this knowledge, you risk failure by having the wrong content for the user’s intent despite a good position, or by having both the position and the content but not leading the user to a conversion.
Understanding what your audience is searching for, what they expect to find, and what they’re trying to do need to be known factors to go along with your keyword research.
Content: Are your plans prioritized accordingly?
Making sure you have a content plan prioritized by likely impact will help you be more successful. Work closely with your CX and data teams to understand how you can convert more users through content.
You should also ask yourself:
Is the format correct? How does my audience want to digest this content? Am I serving them in the right way to help the conversion?
Having a roadmap that clearly outlines the next quarter and an overall plan for the entire year is beneficial. This is especially useful for aligning teams and facilitating collaboration.
Technical SEO: How healthy is the website? What are the plans for 2024?
Technical SEO is integral to an SEO strategy and is often influenced by other departments, requiring broader business discussions. Access to the website’s technical roadmap and participation in its planning can significantly improve the chances of your strategy’s success.
SEO is easily forgotten by engineering teams. Make sure it’s not an afterthought by getting involved in their planning. This makes working as an SEO less stressful. There’s nothing worse than that last-minute “We’re releasing X tomorrow” curveball!
A strategy update is a good time to consider the technical health of SEO in general, looking at opportunities that stand out as opportunities to address this year.
Compare this to some of the top competitors so you have a baseline. You can also use it to make the case for technical work that the development team may require.
Dig deeper: What to look for in a technical SEO audit
Digital PR: Why will your target publications want to talk about your business in 2024?
After reviewing your 2023 performance, you’ll have a clear idea of what worked, what didn’t, or where opportunities may have been missed.
In planning this year, you want to make sure that you don’t fall into any of the problems that hindered the strategy earlier.
Aligning your digital PR plan with your content strategy is crucial, especially when you rely on others to create content. Ask yourself why your target posts would matter to them and identify hooks to highlight in 2024.
Journalists are increasingly time-poor and face pressure to produce quality content at scale. Creating the content your audience is looking for and cultivating the right relationships can lead to success.
Dig Deeper: How SEO and digital PR can drive maximum brand visibility
Collaboration: What is everyone else doing?
Remember, SEO is most successful when integrated into the broader strategy. While some companies incorporate this naturally, many still operate in isolated teams with insufficient communication.
Promote breaking down silos, share the strategy reset process and encourage other teams to undergo similar exercises.
Mimic customer behavior, aligning your priorities and working with the customer journey. The magic happens when you adopt a customer-first mindset.
Perfecting Your 2024 SEO Game Plan
Approach 2024 with confidence by making sure your SEO foundations are strong. Carefully assessing what has worked, where gaps exist, changes in the market, and alignment with business goals will set you up for success.
Use the checklist described here as a framework, adapting the areas to fit your business priorities. With clarity on strategy and transparency through reporting, you can continuously optimize throughout the year, working collaboratively across teams.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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